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Would a Cutie by any other name taste as sweet?

The Cuties brand of Mandarin orange has been around for nearly a decade, becoming one of the most popular – and profitable – fruits in the United States. It's seedless, easy to peel and in demand: Known as the Christmas Orange, bags and boxes of the fruit are flooding stores right now, since they're harvested only from November to mid-January.

But the established brand has some competition: If you haven't seen sacks of Wonderful Halos-brand Mandarins at the market yet, you're about to. The company that sells POM Wonderful pomegranates and juice, and Wonderful pistachios, is spending $100 million on advertising and marketing over the next five years to promote the fruit.

Cuties come in blue, orange and yellow packaging, with a smiling orange cartoon character, cozy in its zippered peel. Halos come in blue and orange packaging, with a smiling orange wearing a yellow halo, a testament to its “pure goodness.”

“Obviously, it's the same product,” says Bob DiPiazza, president of Sun Pacific Marketing, the company that grows and packs Cuties. “We're the No. 1-recognized brand in the produce department today, and we're working hard to keep it that way.”

Companies that grow, pack and distribute produce are borrowing a page from the marketing playbook for packaged foods like Doritos: If you put a catchy name and logo on a product, and persuade the retailer to stock it in a prominent place near the front of the store, it might catch the consumer's eye.

But do branded fruits and vegetables taste better, or is it just in our imagination?

Whatever the answer, if all the marketing muscle gets people choosing fresh foods over packaged, so be it, says registered dietitian Melanie R. Silverman.

“We're a very interesting country, and we need to be seduced and entertained by loud, bright colors,” said Silverman, who specializes in children's nutrition and operates a business called Feeding Philosophies out of Laguna Beach. “And if that's how they want to package fruits and vegetables to get it done, I really don't have a problem with that.”

CUTIES VS. HALOS, A LOVE STORY

To make a long story short, Cuties used to be grown and marketed by two separate California companies: Pasadena-based Sun Pacific CEO Berne Evans III entered into a deal with Delano-based Paramount Citrus, a division of Roll Global, the conglomerate run by Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick. It was Lynda who bestowed the name Cutie on the fruit. The name was trademarked in 2001, and Cuties hit the market in 2004.

Then the companies had a falling out, mostly over how to market the brand.

After a legal battle, Sun Pacific wound up with the Cuties trademark, and Paramount decided to put the power of its Wonderful brand behind its own Mandarins, put them in new packaging and call them Halos.

A visit to Sun Pacific's largest citrus-growing and packing operation, about 30 miles southwest of Bakersfield, provided a glimpse of just how huge the fruit has become. This was Nov. 12, and harvesting of the Cuties had been going on for only 10 days. On a gorgeous, sunny morning in the San Joaquin Valley just off Highway 166, workers on ladders set against stocky, bushy trees plucked the Cuties, most of them still green or yellow, and loaded them into large plastic bins.

At this time of year, the fruit on the trees is the Clementine, a variety of Mandarin orange that didn't exist in the United States as a homegrown product before Cuties came along. Before that, they were imported from Spain.

The bins of Cuties, weighing about 900 pounds each, are put on trucks and driven down the road to the Sun Pacific plant, a massive 600,000-square-foot building that hummed with activity on this day. Oranges rode conveyor belts and tumbled down a busy line, awaiting a wheel that applies stickers pronouncing “I Love Cuties” and “Peel the Love.” Blue and orange boxes floated around the facility on metal carriers resembling ski lifts.

During peak production, combined with a smaller operation in Tulare, Sun Pacific will pack and ship more than 3.2 million pounds of Cuties a day.

Paramount, along with a smaller company, Fowler Packing Co., grows Halos not far from Sun Pacific's groves. Paramount has more Mandarin acreage than its rival, and also has its own giant packinghouse, 450,000 square feet, in Delano, north of Bakersfield. But Sun Pacific says its experience in building and maintaining a trusted brand gives it the edge.

“So we're cognizant of the fact that there's a new player out there, but from a branding standpoint, we like to say we're Kleenex,” DiPiazza said.

Paramount believes in its own process, and its wildly successful Wonderful brand.

“It's about good, consistent quality for the consumer every time,” said David Krause, president of Paramount Citrus. “We call it the brand promise: When you're purchasing our product, you know what to expect, and we stand behind that.”

INVASION OF THE BABIES

Go to any supermarket produce section, and you'll see blatant attempts to appeal to children, who in turn tug on Mom's shirt and demand this or that product.

Not only are there those adorable oranges, there are Bunny-Luv carrots (baby carrots being their own food-industry phenomenon) from Bakersfield-based Grimmway Farms; Glorys, Cherubs and Sunbursts from San Antonio, Texas-based NatureSweet Tomatoes; and Baby Red, White, Gold and Blue potatoes from Quincy, Wash.-based Progressive Produce.

Studies show that fruit and vegetable consumption is rising in the U.S. But a report earlier this year by the Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service also indicated that we still spend too much on foods that are bad for us, and not nearly enough on foods like leafy green vegetables and berries.

Americans also spend less on groceries than do other industrialized nations – about 11 percent of household income, compared with 17 percent three decades ago.

Food companies aren't deterred. DiPiazza, of Sun Pacific, says the company just bought some land near Marysville, and it's ripping out pear trees to plant walnuts and nutrient-dense kiwis. The company is betting on its Ripe & Easy kiwi product, which includes a special tool for cutting open the skin.

“We feel that's kind of a sleeping giant,” he said of the fruit.

Maybe next, somebody can do something to help the image of the misunderstood Brussels sprout.

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